Literature as Document Generic Boundaries in 1930s Western Literature Edited By Carmen Van den Bergh Sarah Bonciarelli Anne Reverseau LEIDEN | BOSTON For use by the Author only | © 2019 Koninklijke Brill NV Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on Contributors viii Introduction: Positions and Roles of Literary “Documents”: Textual Games and the Creation of Hybrids 1 Sarah Bonciarelli, Anne Reverseau and Carmen Van den Bergh part 1 Sketching the Document 1 The Difference between “Document” and “Monument” 15 Remo Ceserani 2 A Re- Evaluation of Documentary Tendencies in Neue Sachlichkeit 28 Gunther Martens and Thijs Festjens part 2 Revisiting the Cornerstones 3 Characters as Social Document in Modernist Collective Novels: the Case of Manhattan Transfer 53 Antonio Bibbò 4 Documenting Berlin in the Twenties: War Neurosis and Inflation in Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz 78 Stijn De Cauwer and Sven Fabré 5 Building up a “Glasshouse” in Nadja: Documenting the Surrealist Way of Life 103 Nadja Cohen For use by the Author only | © 2019 Koninklijke Brill NV vi Contents part 3 Experimental Writings 6 The “Essence of Things” and Their Decomposition: the Use of Montage in Dino Terra’s Metamorfosi 121 Achille Castaldo 7 Tardy Presents: Embodied Agency in the “Documental” Poetry of Benjamin Péret and Antonio Porchia 133 Piet Devos and Gys- Walt Van Egdom part 4 Generic Transfers 8 “Madrid está cerca”: Spanish Civil War Radio Poetry 151 Robin Vogelzang 9 “Documentary” Aspects in Umberto Barbaro’s Literary and Cinematographic Practice 165 Fabio Andreazza 10 Plot Placement and Literary Plot: How Economic Context Becomes Part of Literature 182 Toni Marino For use by the Author only | © 2019 Koninklijke Brill NV chapter 4 Documenting Berlin in the Twenties: War Neurosis and Inflation in Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz Stijn De Cauwer and Sven Fabré 1 The Multiple Effects of Montage in Berlin Alexanderplatz In 1930, Walter Benjamin pointed out in a review of Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Al- exanderplatz that the main stylistic principle at work in this novel is montage. The montage passages that fill the novel do not leave the narrative of the nov- el unaltered. Benjamin remarks: “Die Montage sprengt den Roman, sprengt ihn im Aufbau wie auch stilistisch, und eröffnet neue, sehr epische Möglich- keiten.”1 (110) In words that strongly recall his essay “Der Erzähler”, Benjamin claims that montage brings back elements of the epic which otherwise were lost in the modern novel. For this claim, he finds support in Döblin’s text “Der Bau des epischen Werks.” Benjamin writes that authentic montage is based on the document. As in the work of the Dadaists, reality has to be turned into an ally to give the work greater authenticity. In the review he lists petty- bourgeois printed matter, scandal- mongering, stories of accidents, the sensational inci- dents of 1928, folk songs, advertisements, biblical verses, statistics, lyrics from songs and the usage of Berlin dialect as examples of documental elements inserted by Döblin into the novel. It is well-known that Döblin originally just wanted to call his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz but that the publisher Samuel Fischer claimed a square could not be the subject of a novel, and therefore ordered the addition of the subtitle Die Geschichte vom Franz Biberkopf (“The story of Franz Biberkopf”). The jux- taposition of the two parts of the title opens up the tension already described by Benjamin. The subtitle suggests a linear Bildungsroman narrative, describ- ing the progress of a protagonist, while the main title announces the striking 1 Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Band 3, ed Hella Tiedemann- Bartels, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991, 232. “The montage explodes the framework of the novel, bursts its limits both stylistically and structurally, and clears the way for new epic possibilities.” Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2, eds Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith, Cambridge and London, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999, 301. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/ 9789004384255_ 006 For use by the Author only | © 2019 Koninklijke Brill NV Documenting Berlin in the Twenties 79 feature by which Döblin seems to present the city Berlin as a proper character, letting the city “speak for itself”, as it were. Scholars have often remarked that Döblin wanted to let his writing be formed by the sights and sounds of Berlin, as if he wanted to let the experience of the city direct his writing. One of the techniques Döblin used to achieve this effect was collecting newspaper articles and other printed material such as announcements or postcards and literally “pasting” them into the manuscript. While in “Book One” Franz Biberkopf is released from Tegel prison and thrown into the chaotic swirl of the city, making him want to return to the well- ordered life in prison, it is in “Book Two” that the city is introduced as such. In what is probably the most commented- upon passage of the nov- el, the hustle and bustle of Rosenthaler Platz is described by means of series of shifting techniques. Beginning with the enigmatic statement “Der Rosenthaler Platz unterhält sich”,2 several pages follow in which the diverse activities taking place on the square are presented from an impersonal per- spective. Some of the snippets of daily life inserted into the complex mon- tage are tram stops, names of streets, the offices of the aeg firm, the narrated life story of a boy called Max Rüst, the announcement of the granting of a hunting license, the depiction of a man who was almost killed in an accident, conversations between downtrodden characters, a weather forecast and the different tram fares. David B. Dollenmayer has pointed out the techniques adopted by Döblin are borrowed from film and theatre, such as the literary equivalent of a “tracking shot.” In his “Berliner Program” from 1913, Döblin had already pleaded for a so- called “Kinostil.” The depiction of modern urban life was better achieved by techniques borrowed from cinema than the tra- ditional conventions of the novel. Dollenmayer distinguishes three different shifts in stylistic approach in the description of life on Rosenthaler Platz: “1) documentary style and absence of narrator, 2) cinematographic style and narrator as monteur, and 3) dramatic style with narration restricted to stage directions.”3 Furthermore, he has also pointed out that there is a temporal shift in the markers indicating time in the third part with the dialogues, first beginning with the daytime, shifting to later afternoon and ending with the 2 Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz, München, Deutcher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007, 51. “The Rosenthaler Platz is busily active.” Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz, London and New York, Continuum, 2004, 32. This example shows the difficulty of translating Berlin Alex- anderplatz into English. The different connotations of the German sich unterhalten are lost in the English translation. 3 David B. Dollenmayer, “An Urban Montage and Its Significance in Döblin’s Berlin Alexander- platz”, The German Quarterly, Vol. 53/ 3 (May, 1980), 325. For use by the Author only | © 2019 Koninklijke Brill NV 80 De Cauwer and Fabré evening, thus giving the reader the feeling of having spent a large part of the day on Rosenthaler Platz.4 (321) What should be concluded from this is that the “montage” in Berlin Alexan- derplatz is a widely diverse and plural phenomenon. The technique of mon- tage cannot be sufficiently defined by ascribing one single function or opera- tive principle to it. Even in one passage, different forms of montage techniques can be found, which have different effects in each singular instance, bringing into play different “real life documents”, allusions or fragments, opening up associations, tensions, ambiguities or unexpected affinities, shifting the per- spective or adding layers of meaning to the narration. We have already seen that Walter Benjamin claimed that the montage adds epic elements and authenticity to the novel, “blasting open” its narrative framework. Though Benjamin does not have the space required in his short review to elaborate on the exact nature of the relation between montage and narration, he suggests that the montage elements break open the general Bildungsroman narrative, rendering it more complex and ambiguous. It has often been observed that the ending of the novel – which allegedly shows a reborn, “cured” Franz Biberkopf facing his new future – is highly ambiguous because of the constant insertion of allusions to war, suggesting the grad- ual rise of the National Socialists. The military references (marching drum rhythms, soldiers songs and slogans, combat language) inserted into the final pages suggest that a naïve belief in a bourgeois Bildungsroman structure is no longer possible in Döblin’s time and possibly dangerously congruent with a decline into fascism. Scholars such as Wolfgang Schäffner and Eva Horn have highlighted the epistemological consequences of Döblin’s usage of montage.5 In her article “Literary Research: Narration and the Epistemology of the Human Sciences in Alfred Döblin”, Eva Horn situates the work of Döblin in a tradition of novels that aim less for “representational mimesis” of the world than for conducting literary experiments. Authors practising the latter method place the charac- ters in a given constrained situation to observe the consequences. Writers such as Zola argued that both the novel and the sciences share an epistemological impulse.